McCloy

To the Editors of The Crimson:

This is an historical and personal footnote to the Editorial and Dissenting Opinions on the John J. McCloy Exchange Scholarship. Right after Pearl Harbor, friends of mine in what was then the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service asked me to come to Washington to use what little influence I might have to prevent the expulsion of the West Coast Japanese Americans. These friends were social scientists, students of public opinion, cognizant of the loyalty of the Japanese Americans to the United States, and also of the mounting pressure on the West Coast--a combination of greedy landowners, jealous of the more prudent and hard-working Japanese farmers, and xenophobes--for expulsion or internment. The landowners wanted the Japanese holdings; the xenophobes, their disappearance from the West Coast.

I intervened with an acquaintance, the Attorney General Francis Biddle, and members of the Department of Justice; these men opposed internment. General DeWitt, in command of West Coast Army headquarters, joined the pressure; "military necessity" overruled objections from Washington. In my recollection, McCloy was not an actor in what quickly became West Coast mass California hysteria. David Riesman '31